366 Songs 313: Brontosaurus

To me, “Brontosaurus” is a song that points at all manner of other musical futures while staying defiantly in the “pop” space – It’s surprisingly heavy for the Move, and between that crushing bass riff and Roy Wood’s whiny screamy vocals, suggests that perhaps the band was going to move into the psych-esque space of proto heavy rock that was forming around the time this was recorded. But, then again, there’s the (very Who-esque) switch up with the acoustic chords and piano at 2:32 where things start to swing and get a little Mod-y, and the freakout that follows suggests a possibility closer to the Small Faces (or even the Faces), that odd idea of a laddish band of musos who just wanted to mess around and have fun and somehow accidentally ended up producing some great music along the way. To see a band with as much potential for greatness in 1970 as the Move turn into ELO just a year later is kind of heartbreaking, in its way.

…Really. Just tragic.

366 Songs 312: Fire Brigade

As far as I’m concerned, this is one of those classic pop songs that people should deconstruct and try to get to the bottom of pop music DNA. Certainly, it has all the pieces that you’d expect from a late ’60s pop hit, right down to guitars that sound alternately like the Byrds and the Shadows and harmony vocals to die for (There’s also a piano somewhat down in the mix, which feels oddly particular to that era; you can hear it most clearly just after the choruses, for some strange reason). There’s also that amazing bridge – which starts at 1:36 in the video above – where the song falls down and the builds itself back up again, which is likely my favorite part of the whole thing, aside from Roy Wood’s weirdly nostalgic, neurotic lyrics about a schoolboy crush that terrorized him (“Friends all seem to laugh/I fear I’m apt to make a compromise/Try to reassure myself/My head must need some exercise/Half past ten in the morning/She just took me by surprise,” and later, “I’d love you all to meet her”).

This is an irresistible song, something that sounds hokey and throwaway and then you realize that it’s in your head and it’ll never, ever come out.